A New Generation: From Breastfeeding at BlogHer to Blogging at BlogHer ’14

I’m always proud of our kids. Always. But I think that is typical of most parents.

I mean, we’re the type of people who jump up and down clapping when they pee in a toilet.

So imagine my pride when my son thought he might start a blog. I immediately began to give him ideas for posts, got him started on wordpress, asked him if he wanted to make a custom design… you know, the usual.

Flash forward about 24 hours and he was already bored with his blog.

It was then I heard ‘Hey Mom, can I start a blog?’

It was my daughter. The one who would rather not sit and read the hilarious blog post I had found just for her. The one who would rather get a shot at the pediatrician than write.

But flash forward another 24 hours and not only was she blogging, but she was loving every second of it.

Begging me to check and see if she had any new comments to approve while she was at school- you know that darn school, always getting in the way of her blogging ‘No Mom, I don’t need any ideas for a post, I have like….a million’ she would say, typing furiously. ‘And can you make sure to tweet this to everyone, oh and show Facebook?’

I did my best to show her the basics, but she is a bit like her mother and rather determined to learn all on her very own.

During one of her lectures to me about how important it was she learn how to blog without my help, I remembered her on my hip at the BlogHer conference in 2006 in San Jose.

It seems like yesterday, but not.

Now she has her own blog. Now she has her ow ideas about what a nine-year old should talk about. And now she has her own pass to BlogHer.

Yes, Princess Peanut has a student pass for BlogHer ’14 in San Jose and her and I are going to have a girls weekend writing, learning about all the wonderful things and issues that come with being part of a community, and with me re-introducing her to all the women who met her so many years ago.

Comments

Erin, I have up until now rolled my eyes SUPER HARD when I hear about bloggers encouraging their children to start blogs. But this story really touched me and so I clicked and the first thing I thought was “Hey, cool design.” And how adorable is she? What an amazing head start in all of the things for this kid. I know you will steer her in the right direction. Thanks for sharing this.

I always made the kids wait until they were 13 to go. They love it though. Elizabeth’s first time was last year and she was completely amazed by the expo hall. The other children have either died of shyness or loved it or both. And you’ve read RJ’s reactions.

I’m so excited for her that she gets to have the BlogHer experience at her age. If blogging had been around when I was a kid I would have been ALL OVER IT. Instead, I hand wrote stories and essays and marveled at how much more real they seemed when my mother or grandmother typed them for me.

At the risk of sounding cynical, I think its important that your kids understand just how lucky they are to be young at a time when they can start their own blog just like that and if they work it hard they can be taken as seriously as any adult blogger on the strength of their writing alone.

A few weeks ago I was throwing out old junk and came across a Linux Journal magazine from 1998 which contained the first piece I ever got published, which was also
the first ever piece I was paid to write, which now that I look
back, I can say that my career as a professional journalist began right there. But I had to pitch the story successfully before I could get published, only after that could I point to a published writing sample.

Your kids have the power to render my entire experience unnecessary because they can publish themselves right now, and if they play their cards right, by the time they are the age I was when I was first published (14, for those keeping score) they will already have a substantial body of work to be proud of.